Earlier this week, Casey Stoner mused to the media that he felt he’d really missed out because the two-stroke 500cc grand prix machines were gone by the time he got to premier class MotoGP.
Just a few days later, the double MotoGP champion got chance to try two of Suzuki’s 500cc grand prix machines at the Goodwood Festival of Speed and declared it one of his “best days” in motorsport.
Stoner moved up from the two-stroke 250cc machines to MotoGP in 2006, four years after the premier class had switched to four-stroke machinery.
On Sunday he finally had chance to fulfil an ambition with the help of two fellow past champions – 1993 title winner Kevin Schwantz and 2000 counterpart Kenny Roberts Jr.
Stoner had been at Goodwood to ride his 2007 and ’08 800cc Ducatis, but a conversation with Schwantz during the event set things in motion for him to try some bikes he’d dreamed of.
He was able to sample machines raced by both Roberts and Schwantz and now owned by Team Classic Suzuki, riding Roberts’ 1993 title-winning machine as well as the iconic Pepsi-liveried 1989 bike raced by Schwantz.
“I’d say that this is definitely one of my best days in motorsport,” Stoner told The Race in an exclusive interview afterwards.
“Not only did I get to ride a 500, I rode Kenny’s and Kevin’s! I was four years old when Kevin was riding his!
“I never got the chance to ride a two-stroke even though my whole life was built up around going to 500s and riding that.
“I missed out by that much, and never got the chance to ride a 500 in anger.
“I still haven’t, but just to feel it, to feel the raw power, how light they are – there’s no way to explain the difference between MotoGP currently and those.
“I was blown away by how light and precise it is compared to a GP bike. And very, very stiff as well, which surprised me.
“You’d have to ride it on a track with the right tyres to actually give some comments though, rather than teetering down the hill.
“You can normally get enough feedback to know what you’d expect if you could get it up to speed. It’s beautiful to ride.”
Stoner spoke extensively at Goodwood this week about his feeling that modern MotoGP has lost its way and become dominated by electronic rider aids and aerodynamics rather than rider feeling and talent.
The two short runs on the two-stroke machines cemented his view even more.
“I’ve said it for a long time: even in my era, there was way too much going on,” he stressed again.
“This is real. This is an art form. This is danger. This will bite you in the ass real quick compared to what they’ve got these days, and nobody can possibly understand that until you ride that – and possibly until you get launched to the moon.
“You can’t describe it until you feel it, but if the riders who are currently on the bikes now could feel that, they would understand ‘what we do isn’t so bad’.
“The Pepsi bike, the 1989 bike, we didn’t have it properly jetted or anything so I wasn’t really getting the full feedback, but this one was phenomenally smooth in every aspect. I know from two-strokes about power build-up and all that.
“There’s this constant power in a four-stroke where you know what it’s going to do, but with this you’ve got to wait to see where it puts you.”
